Object #34 - Alpha-Omega Bomb - Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

Dir. Ted Post

Beneath the Planet of the Apes is quite possibly the weirdest sequel to a major film I've ever seen. The film is quite obviously done on less of a budget, with crowd scenes of the apes looking particularly shoddy due to poor mask work, as opposed to the stellar make-up/mask work on main ape characters. The lack of budget hangs over the film, and a lack of creativity permeates the first half of the film. Brent (James Franciscus) is on a search mission for first film protagonist, Taylor (Charlton Heston). Brent crashes his ship, discovers the mute human, Nova (Linda Harrison), discovers the ape civilization, meets kindly apes Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (David Watson), and discovers that human society has been destroyed by witnessing the remains of New York monuments - stop me if you've heard this one before. 

But it's from here on that the film becomes it's own, but oh boy is it weird! To step back a little, the film opens immediately after the iconic "You blew it up!" scene from Taylor. Taylor and Nova ride their horse further into the Forbidden Zone, which already feels odd as there's such a distinct feeling of 'Why am I watching this?', as in, why are we continuing a story directly after it's reached the twist climax? The message of the story is done, there's not much more to be done with Taylor as a character, nor the plot. To the film's credit, it realizes this and has Taylor fall into an invisible chasm in the rocks after witnessing a fiery wall. Then Brent's story re-hashes the original film's plot. 

Franciscus is a dead-ringer for Heston, and it really does feel like a poor-man's Planet of the Apes for around 50 minutes. But we've already seen Heston in new scenes! Why bother having the initial continuation? It's only there to explain how Taylor winds up in the city later in the film, and explain how Nova got away. This could so simply have been re-written! The scene with Nova meeting Brent, with Taylor's dog-tags tipping him off to Taylor's existence could have been kept, in fact, in would add a nice sense of mystery to Brent's proceedings. The only thing lost is the introduction of the fire-wall. It's really shoddy, and a very weird opening to the sequel of a majorly successful film.

After the re-hash, Brent and Nova discover a group of humans in the remains of New York city. They wear robes, appear emotionless, and can mind-control Brent and Nova to hurt each other. No you didn't miss anything, that's what happens! First of all, humans. In Planet of the Apes, particularly the ending scenes with the doll in the cave and of course, Lady Liberty herself, we are told that humans are long gone, long gone. An entire ape society has evolved since the nuclear war, and any humans left have devolved to lose their ability to speak, and act as the 'apes' of our time. Humanity, as we know it today, is gone. But here, it isn't. These humans, somehow, have survived the war, and have retained an air of civilization in this desolation. This undercuts the original film and the superb ending, as we know that just around the corner, in the Forbidden Zone, this group of civilized mutants were going about their business.

The humans have mutated to such a degree that they have psychic abilities, such as mind-reading and thought-control. If this sounds like a rip off of a Star Trek episode you're not far off, as the series was running at this time and has similar plots in some of it's episodes, such as Plato's Stepchildren, broadcast in late 1968, where all-powerful aliens control the minds of the Enterprise crew for their own entertainment. It really dives the up-until-know mature Twilight Zone/Star Trek vibe of the the series into the lower annals of those two shows, and is more of a direct rip off then ever, becoming kitschy and unrealistic. It is moderately unique however, as our object, the Alpha-Omega bomb, leads to some iconic and homageable scenes of their own.

The mutants worship an ancient nuclear bomb, with a congregation of worshipers who sing hymns to the tune of an organ, wear ceremonial robes, and in their moment of exaltation, remove their human masks to reveal their mutated, nuclear scarred faces. It's striking imagery, but not for all the right reasons. I normally hate criticizing a film for plot elements as it isn't the most important thing in my opinion, but here it's remarkable. So this is a nuclear wasteland, and yet these mutants have a working church, built into the rock, somehow have constructed masks to cover their mutations, and have also possess books, organs, and in later scenes, statuettes of their leaders. What?! Where did their find the materials for all this? Why would they bother creating the masks if they've no contact with other humans or apes? If they are descendants of human survivors of the war, then I doubt they even know what a regular human looks like, and if so, why would they care to look like them if all they've ever known is their mutated selves? If it's a religious thing, and they want to ascend back to the 'perfect' human, then why exalt in the mutation in the service? How did this religion even come to be? So many questions, some best left to the imagination to have some mystery and sense of prior story, but most need answering, as they detract from the plot and the world. 

And yet...that's sort of the point. It's so bold in the allegory it doesn't care to focus on the details. The themes and visuals are so strong that they become iconic. It's clearly a biting satire of the 'worship' of the nuclear bomb that won the Allies the Second World War, but also the 'worship' of it in 1950's American culture. It's no wonder that these mutants are referenced in the third game of the Fallout series, with the Church of the Children of Atom, as that series portrays a society that thrived using nuclear power, yet kept the 1950's values. The bomb, called the Alpha-Omega bomb, the beginning and the end, is the only way these mutants keep sane in this world, through worshiping the symbol of death and new-life. Their human lives were changed by the bomb, mutating their bodies yet enhancing their mental abilities, but crucially, not their intelligence. They believe they will become one with the world via the exploding of the bomb.

As this goes on, the apes invade the Forbidden Zone and storm the ruins and the church. It's downright surreal! Humanoid, intelligent apes with guns vs. mutant atomic-bomb worshiping humans, with Brent, Nova, and Taylor (two of which are out of time) caught in the middle. 

The bomb is damaged, and has enough energy to destroy the entire planet. In rapid succession, Nova is killed by the apes, Taylor is shot, and Brent gunned down after managing to shoot down the gorilla General Ursus (James Gregory). This is the end for these characters, who admittedly we've known for a short amount of time but it's shocking nonetheless in brutality. Taylor pleads with Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) for help stopping the bomb, but Zaius remains stuck in his ways, saying that man is only able to destroy. 

Taylor falls, gasping out "It's Doomsday" as he hits the detonation switch with his bloodied hand.
The bomb rumbles, we pan in on his hand, it slips, a white light fills the screen, then darkness. A voice-over tells us "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead". Then the credits roll, in silence. 

...WHAT? That's the ending, not only of this film, but to all the films in the series as they all take place chronologically behind Beneath. It's bold, bleak, and incredibly abrupt. In this surreal war-scape, main characters are removed brutally, they act not out of character, but out of character with the entire tone of the original film, and even the re-hash elements of this sequel. Would Taylor really want to exterminate this world after his extreme reaction to the ruins of Lady Liberty? Is this all Brent deserves, to be shot in this climactic battle for the entire fate of the world? But this battle doesn't feel that climactic, it isn't deserved by anything that comes before, it feels like a skirmish in the Forbidden Zone with some mutated freaks, which is exactly what it is. If it wasn't for this Alpha-Omega bomb which, incidentally, we are never informed how came to be, or be found, or survive the initial nuclear war, this would be a small, incidental battle.

The abrupt voice-over, the first use of it in the film, brings the matters of the world to a cosmic level, which jarrs with what we are seeing, and have seen throughout the film. This is how the Earth bites the bullet? Really? The beauty of the original film is that the climax of humanity happened in the past, leaving an interesting world behind. Seeing the event happen again in this way is not only unsatisfying, it's uncalled for, and with the voice-over we know there is no future at all this time. If this is the point the film is trying to make, that nuclear war would be the end of the Earth, then it squanders the fascinating allegory of the apes for no good reason. It's shocking, bold, unsatisfying, yet unshakable in the memory.